Top of the News

Monday

Sep 28, 2009 at 12:48 AM

OKLAHOMA CITY — Long-secret security tapes showing the chaos immediately after the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building are blank in the minutes before the blast and appear to have been edited, a lawyer who obtained the recordings said Sunday.

“The real story is what’s missing,” said Jesse Trentadue, a Salt Lake City lawyer who obtained the recordings through the federal Freedom of Information Act as part of an unofficial inquiry he is conducting into the April 19, 1995, bombing that killed 168 people and injured hundreds more.

The tapes turned over by the FBI came from security cameras various companies had mounted outside office buildings near the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. They are blank at points before 9:02 a.m., when a truck carrying a 4,000-pound fertilizer-and-fuel-oil bomb detonated in front of the building, Trentadue said.

“Four cameras in four different locations going blank at basically the same time on the morning of April 19, 1995. There ain’t no such thing as a coincidence,” Trentadue said.

The soundless recordings show people rushing from nearby buildings after the bomb went off. Some show people fleeing through corridors cluttered with debris. None show the actual explosion that ripped through the federal building.

BERLIN — German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday won the center-right majority that eluded her four years ago — nudging Europe’s biggest economic power to the right as it claws its way out of a deep recession.

Voters sent the nation’s main left-wing party, the Social Democrats of Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, into opposition after 11 years as part of the government. It was the party’s worst parliamentary election result since World War II.

“There is no talking around it: This is a bitter defeat,” a subdued Steinmeier said, vowing to lead a strong opposition.

The conservative Merkel managed to end her four-year “grand coalition” with the Social Democrats thanks to a very strong showing by her new coalition partner, the pro-business Free Democrats. Her own Christian Democrats produced an underwhelming showing.

“Tonight we can really celebrate,” said a beaming Merkel, greeted by chants of “Angie! Angie!” from supporters. “(But) there are many problems in our country to be solved.”

WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah — In letters written to her mother, the woman charged in the 2002 kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart has sought forgiveness for any pain she has caused and said she expects to spend the rest of her life in prison.

Wanda Eileen Barzee, 63, however, makes just one reference to Smart in the 12 letters obtained by The Associated Press.

And she doesn’t provide details about the nine months the girl allegedly spent with her and her now-estranged husband Brian David Mitchell.

The couple is charged with multiple felonies in state court and last year was indicted by a federal grand jury.

Elizabeth Smart was abducted from her Salt Lake City bedroom at the age of 14 and was found nine months later in the custody of Barzee and Mitchell.

“In one of these letters, Wanda is remembering the sins that she did,” said Barzee’s mother, 88-year-old Dora Corbett, who provided letters sent between July 2008 and August 2009 to the AP. “She doesn’t talk about it, she just remembers them and says she needs to repent of them.”

But Barzee writes of repentance only when discussing her desire to be re-baptized in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In a June 21 letter, she recounts talking to a local church leader about the steps necessary to regain her membership, which includes making a full confession.

“He knows that Elizabeth Smart and I were victims of Brian,” wrote Barzee, who was excommunicated by the church in 2002.

BOSTON — A book on U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., is set to hit bookstores.

“Barney Frank: The Story of America’s Only Left-Handed, Gay, Jewish Congressman” is scheduled to be released Tuesday and is based on interviews with more the 150 people, including Frank.

The biography, written by lawyer Stuart Weisberg, retraces the congressman’s life from his working-class childhood in Bayonne, N.J., to his years at Harvard and his career in politics.

The book also discusses how Frank’s role as the most prominent openly gay politician in Congress, and the highly publicized sex scandal involving a male prostitute that nearly ended his career.

Weisberg served for 10 years as staff director and chief counsel for the House Government Operations Subcommittee on Employment and Housing.

From The Associated Press

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.